The Marsh Birds (13 page)

Mrs Azadeh liked to invite Dhurgham and Aziz over with Abu Nizar as ‘father' and to tell stories together. They told epic adventures of Salahuddin, Sayf bin dhi Yazan the Yemeni, and others. All popular, light stuff. And they told their own stories, the laughable and terrible things that had happened to them on their various journeys. They shared and laughed over anecdotes about their experiences in Mawirrigun: Dhurgham and Aziz drove adults crazy with giggling role play and re-enactments after Mrs Azadeh told them that for her first month in the centre she thought ‘Fuck off ' and ‘Fuck you'were Australian courtesies.

But tonight Aziz's grim mood dominated, and his question hung in the air. Aziz's lawyer had said that he would be out as soon as his case was heard, but that had been four months before. The case was heard, Aziz won, but then nothing happened.

No one felt like telling stories tonight. Lina sighed.

‘No one in Australia knows about what happens here. Until you are freed, you are not in Australia,' she said. ‘My husband has been in Melbourne for a year. All the people, they are lovely. They gave him a mattress, a quilt and a computer and much more, and they help take our son to school every day.'

‘They must know. They just hate us. They hate the Arabs. They blame us,' muttered Abu Nizar.

‘We are not all Arabs here, and hate us for what?' Aziz was almost shouting. His young voice cracked into a squeaky sob.

‘For all the unhappiness of the world. We are the new Jews.'

Dhurgham was silent. Even Suha's company across the room barely stirred him, even though, as everyone knew, she was the reason he and Aziz came so eagerly to these gatherings. He saw a tear on Suha's cheek, and still sat detached, even annoyed with her. He had heard the same kind of things over and over, the same despair, the same overwhelming reasons for everything, the same hope for the real Australia, and the same lugubrious resignation. It was all the same, every day. Yet just now he could dimly perceive that he and Aziz and the other lost boys were the pioneers in a new world, and that, really, it was up to them to stand up and be men and refuse this humiliation, shake it off. He wanted to strike Abu Nizar for his resignation.

He felt utterly depressed.

He felt like punching a hole in the thin wall. If Mr Hosni were to appear suddenly in Mawirrigun, he would leap upon him like a wild animal and beat him senseless. He hoped for Mr Hosni's appearance with a kind of thirst. And Mr Hosni, he was sure, had no idea what would await him if he travelled after Dhurgham to Australia. Humiliation, indefinite imprisonment and Dhurgham's revenge. And then he felt the cold sweat spring out on his back and throat with terror that Mr Hosni might appear, might twist him, take the upper hand. He focused on reconstructing those piles of money, stack by stack, slowly feeling into his child-memory for just how much money that had been. US dollars, in 100s; not riyals, or dinars or lira. It must have been—$500 000. It could not possibly have been spent in two years on rent and food and scouts. It would have paid the airfare, the expenses, Mr Leon's fee, and plenty to spare. He was an idiot baby, and he shuddered in his bunk with self-revulsion.

Dhurgham once made a small wooden horse and warrior for Mr Hosni. It took him three days. He had made them before, one for Nura first, then his uncle, then the best one for his father. But the one he made for Mr Hosni was the best of all, for it was so well balanced that it stood up, while the others had needed a ball of sticky tape under one hoof to counter the raised foreleg. It was glossy and smooth, round-muscled, proud-limbed, the warrior erect, with a scimitar in his hand. Mr Hosni had had tears in his eyes when he received it and had treasured it. Mr Hosni knew and appreciated the making of things. Dhurgham's father had not treasured his, and Dhurgham had kept it on his own windowsill for him. Dhurgham, staring at the ceiling from his bunk, saw himself fashioning the joints and the limbs of that horse, and he hated himself with a bitter violence, and hated Mr Hosni more. His face twisted, eyes looking at nothing, and he swore softly, over and over again, but he could get no relief. Aziz asked him what was happening, man, and he punched Aziz full in the mouth, then threw himself out of the door and into the dusty compound, speechless. He marched head down back and forth along the perimeter fence, swearing in English, ‘Fuck shit fuck fuck fuck!'

He felt ashamed ten minutes later, but when he went back to apologise to Aziz, he felt like punching him again as soon as he saw him, so he stayed silent, climbed into his bunk and stared at the ceiling again.

Mr Hosni's voice crept back into his ears. He and Mr Hosni were watching TV, Mr Hosni raised an eyebrow at something and snorted in comical disbelief. He couldn't remember what it was. He could remember Mr Hosni's face and his own feelings. They laughed together until they cried, then sighed and ate.

Dhurgham began to weep with rage. A con man! A con man had taken his family's entire wealth. He suddenly leant over the side of the bunk and vomited onto the floor, making Aziz under him jump and swear.

‘Are you sick?' Aziz asked, trying to break into Dhurgham's rage, seeking an apology.

Dhurgham didn't answer. He found himself, surprisingly, sobbing. Nooni would be such a beautiful woman now! He would be so proud of her. He longed for her with every muscle and every bone of his chest.
My sister sister sister, save me
, he whispered, and sobbed himself to sleep.

With a sister, with Nura by his side, he would have had proof that he was slotted in like a piece of the puzzle into the world. Without her, he had no home.

A Thursday came in which Aziz suddenly got his Permanent Protection Visa, became an Australian, and disappeared in a puff of crazy joy. Dhurgham missed him bitterly. He lived one week in sleepless fear of al Haj, and then, to his astonishment, al Haj got his visa too and was gone. Dhurgham slept for forty-eight hours and woke to find his donga had filled with strangers.

Abu Rafik had no son named Rafik. He was called that because of a small boy he had adopted, an orphan from Palestine. No one mistreated or yelled at Rafik because most were afraid of Abu Rafik's tongue. Everyone respected Abu Rafik, even when they resented him. Rafik disappeared one day, when Abu Rafik gave the guards a piece of his mind in broken English, and after that Abu Rafik became silent. Rumour spread that the guards had killed Rafik to break Abu Rafik's spirit and then buried his body out in the red sands where no one would ever find him, but a lawyer told Mrs Azadeh that Rafik had been moved to Kanugo Kagil, a processing centre in the city of Sydney.

The guards were mostly just teenagers themselves, and the older men and women found it hard to submit to their buttocks and calves being tapped and prodded by the batons of these boys, to having half-broken voices abuse them or humiliate them with petty rules. It didn't take anything too dramatic to break someone's spirit.

Abu Rafik ignored Dhurgham for a while and then began to watch him. Dhurgham felt the eyes of the old man on his back and developed an unreasoning fear of Abu Rafik's calm and silent face. Had Rafik been his lover? Was he looking for another? He gave the older man one or two filthy looks in the hope that this would put him off. He began to have nightmares that took him back to Damascus. He wished Aziz were still with him. Then he began to want Abu Rafik's glances because they gave him something and someone to hate, something to focus on. He started to think of insulting things he could say to the old man should he get up the courage, or should the old man try anything, anything at all. He imagined various forms of righteous violence against the vile old fellow, once all was revealed, and took to catching glimpses of Abu Rafik and muttering to himself darkly over him.

So one day when Abu Rafik sent for him, Dhurgham was very nervous, and ready to fight or bribe or abuse and shame the older man, anything. He was dizzy, walking on the balls of his feet, his mind racing.

Abu Rafik was kneeling on a prayer rug in the recreation room, staring at his hands, as if he had finished praying but could not return to action. His clothes were impeccably clean, unlike Dhurgham's which were stained with the red dust of the compound. Abu Rafik greeted him courteously and then waited a moment until the other men in the room had moved away. Then he said a shocking thing.

‘I knew your father, ya Ibni.' His voice was very quiet. His accent was Syrian. He raised his eyes to Dhurgham's white face. Dhurgham stood, frozen, unable to bring his dream father into this world so quickly, unable to think, groping to find whether he should be happy and slip into decent manners, or be very afraid. The old, real world shuddered into being within him. His father. He was shaking, clammy, staring, and all the strange madness of the past Abu Rafik-hating weeks drifted away. He thought he might pass out.

Abu Rafik's face was open and calm. ‘I was a friend,' he said even more softly, so only Dhurgham could hear, and Dhurgham sat down in front of him, his legs failing under him. And suddenly, as if an airhole at the end of a long darkened cave was opened, Dhurgham sensed rather than recognised that this man was familiar. He had a memory, buried somewhere, of this man.

‘Where is he, Uncle?' he whispered through dry lips.

Abu Rafik's face clouded and Dhurgham saw him hesitate but didn't know how to read it.

‘I don't know, my son,' Abu Rafik said slowly, barely audibly. ‘No one has seen him since he, you, fled. Be careful, now. Don't look around. Even here there are eyes and ears.'

Dhurgham from then on clung to Abu Rafik, hardly allowing the older man breathing space. He never learned any more about what had happened to his family, but he learned a lot about himself and his father, about life and about Iraq. Abu Rafik became his teacher and Dhurgham's love of books and of knowledge resurfaced and took over his whole self. He felt as though the boy who had been switched off like a light at age twelve was suddenly switched on again, and he clutched at that confident and beloved former self. The intervening years seemed just a bad dream, something putrid and painful that he stored well wrapped up and almost forgotten among his things. With the return of his old self, a world unfolded as if shaken out and spread over everything, a world in which people discussed good and evil, right and wrong; in which one strove for the light; a world ordered by goodness, principles, teachings and wisdom flowing from fathers to sons.

But this was no return to the past. With this world came, finally, his grief, bringing back to him Nura's face, with all its mobility and fierce love. His mother's and then his father's. His memories overwhelmed him, leaving a mist only over the escape. After a week of daily lessons with Abu Rafik, Dhurgham asked him whether his father would really be so angry that he would not seek his son. Abu Rafik told him gently to study, now, in honour of their memory. And Dhurgham sobbed for an hour into the old man's chest under the watching eyes of the others and the gaze of the discomforted guards.

Abu Rafik started the next lesson differently.

‘Recite the Fatiha,' he said gently.

Dhurgham recited the Fatiha.

Abu Rafik was silent for a moment. Dhurgham waited.

‘All the Koran is contained in the Fatiha,' Abu Rafik said then. ‘And all the Fatiha is contained in the bismillah at its beginning. All the bismillah is contained in the “b”, and all the “b”in this one tiny dot.'He wrote the long boat of the letter ‘b' on a piece of paper, adding its single dot last. ‘The mystics would say, “I am the dot!”'Abu Rafik turned and looked at him.‘There is a whole universe inside you, Dhurgham.'

Tears burst from Dhurgham, this time for happiness. This was the truth he himself had glimpsed alone, in extremity on the ocean.

He felt loved. Discovered.

He could almost hear his mother's voice at night in the donga, breathy and gentle. He could see her face and hands as she packed the eggs she had just carried in from the nests under the palm grove. He saw her thin, bent back as she hoed with Ahmad under the palms, showing him how to do it. He could see her face, angular and worried. He could see her eyes, so like Nooni's, but with no fun in them. He could remember how annoyed he would get if she asked him to help Ahmad to change over the kerosene. He could remember her laughing, too, when he snuggled up next to her on the mattress on the roof as they all lay together and listened to the noises of sleepless Baghdad under the velvet sky, the city coming alive after the fierce heat of the day. How much they loved summer nights!